Mittie Maude Lena Gordon

Mittie Maude Lena Gordon (August 2, 1889–1961)[1] was an American black nationalist who established the Peace Movement of Ethiopia.[2] The organization advocated black emigration to West Africa in response to racial discrimination and white supremacy.[3]

Mittie Maude Lena Gordon
Born
Mittie Maude Lena Nelson

August 2, 1889
Webster Parish, Louisiana, U.S.
DiedJune 16, 1961(1961-06-16) (aged 71)
OccupationActivist

Early life

Gordon was born Mittie Maude Lena Nelson in Webster Parish, Louisiana.[4] Dismayed at the poor educational and job prospects in Louisiana, Gordon's family moved to Hope, Arkansas, when she was a child, where she grew up with her nine siblings. Her father, discovering that the schools were no better for black students in Arkansas, decided to homeschool his children himself. Through her father, she learned about the Pan-Africanist ideas of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who advocated that former slaves in America should resettle in Africa, and that American blacks shared a common struggle with people of color from all over the world, both ideas that Gordon continued to espouse through her life.[5][6]

Career

She relocated from the South to East St. Louis, Illinois, in the mid-1910s to seek better job opportunities. In 1917, she and her family were caught in the East St. Louis riots in which dozens of blacks were killed by white mobs. Her son, John Sullivan, was beaten during the riots and died several months later of his injuries.[7]

Gordon was a delegate to the 1929 UNIA convention in Jamaica. In Chicago, in December 1932, she founded the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, which advocated for the repatriation of African Americans to Liberia, because it would be cheaper to establish African Americans in West Africa than to provide them with welfare in America.[4] Her Peace Movement sent a petition with over 400,000 signatures to President Roosevelt in 1933. The petition was diverted to the State Department, from there it was diverted to the Division of Western European Affairs, where it stagnated.[4] During this time, she also ran a restaurant on State Street in Chicago's predominantly black South Side until economic pressures from the Depression forced it to close in 1934.[6][8]

Due to her affiliation with Japanese politicians and Japanese members of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World as well as the Black Dragon Society in the early 1940s, she was put under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[9][10] In October 1942, she was arrested for "conspiring with the Japanese", an enemy nation of the United States during World War II,[9] and she spent the majority of the war years in jail.[11]

Gordon was married twice. Her first husband was William Gordon, who she married shortly after moving to Chicago; he died in 1948. Her second husband was Moses Gibson.[12]

Relationship with white supremacists

Gordon was keen to pass the Greater Liberia Bill in order to "advance black emigration to Liberia."[12] This bill proposed buying land in Africa from England and France and situating African Americans there who would be emigrating from the United States. These immigrants would also be given land grants and financial help to encourage them to move to Liberia. In order to achieve her goal Gordon had to forge relationships with white supremacists in positions of power. Earnest Sevier Cox was one of these figures, and despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum, he also supported Gordon's goal and the bill in general. Obviously their motivations were vastly different: Cox wanting the deportation of African Americans from the US, as he saw them as inferior, whereas Gordon wanted improved social conditions for her fellow people. Cox's own interest in the bill led to Gordon contacting him by letter and persuading him to help support her cause. In the end Cox was unable to get the bill passed but he did manged to get the Virginia General Assembly to pass a resolution that urged US Congress to give federal assistance to those African Americans who wanted to migrate.[12]

Upon realizing that Cox alone would not be able to help her achieve her goal, Gordon turned to another white supremacist who was in an even higher position of authority: US senator Theodore G. Bilbo who, similarly to Cox, wanted African Americans to be deported or for there to be racial segregation in America. Bilbo was a figure who had been a proponent of this idea of deportation before the Greater Liberia Bill's existence and was therefore the perfect 'ally' for Gordon. Mittie Gordon even referred to Bilbo as 'Moses' who was leading her and her organisation, PME, through the senate. However she only did this as a means to encourage him to pass this Bill that she so desperately wanted. In fact when it became apparent in the Senate that the Greater Liberia Bill was not in fact not popular and was criticised for its logistical problems, the relationship between the two deteriorated quickly. Gordon went on a tirade in the media lambasting Bilbo and white America in general. She criticised the nation for its racial injustices and highlighted that white peoples would one day pay for their forefather's sins in the form of an African American President.[12]

Despite the help from both of these powerful figures, Gordon finished her political career dejected as she did not manage to get the Liberia Bill passed. Clearly this alliance between white supremacists and the black nationalist had not yielded the results she wanted. This does nothing to take away from the political career of Mittie Gordon who spent her whole life fighting for the rights and freedoms of African Americans and only wanted what was best for her people in a nation that was directly supressing them.

Death

Gordon died of heart failure on June 16, 1961.[13][12]

Gordon's nephew (son of her older brother Clarence Allen Nelson) was the musician John Lewis Nelson. Her grandnephew, John Lewis Nelson's son, was the musician Prince.[14][15]

References
  1. Blain, Keisha (2016). ""Confraternity Among All Dark Races": Mittie Maude Lena Gordon and the Practice of Black (Inter)nationalism in Chicago, 1932 – 1942". Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. 2 (5): 151–18. doi:10.1353/pal.2016.0018. S2CID 164679231. Retrieved March 15, 2017.
  2. Blain, Keisha N. (2021), Rietzler, Katharina; Owens, Patricia (eds.), ""The Dark Skin[ned] People of the Eastern World": Mittie Maude Lena Gordon's Vision of Afro-Asian Solidarity", Women's International Thought: A New History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179–197, doi:10.1017/9781108859684.012, ISBN 978-1-108-49469-4, S2CID 234214571, retrieved 2021-03-06
  3. Parr, Jessica; Blain, Keisha (August 18, 2015). "Guest Post: Racial Violence and Black Nationalist Politics". earlyamericanists. Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  4. Jallone, Aullusine; Falola, Toyin (2008). The United States and West Africa: Interactions and Relations. University Rocherster Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-1-58046-277-8.
  5. Gartrell, John (2017-12-01). "'Hidden Figures' in the Robert A. Hill Collection: Mittie Maude Lena Gordon". The Devil's Tale: Dispatches From the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Duke University. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  6. Owens, P.; Rietzler, K. (2021). Women's International Thought: A New History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-49469-4. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  7. Blain, Keisha N. (2020-06-10). "Echoes of the 1917 East St. Louis "Race Riot" in Today's Uprisings". The Intercept. Retrieved 2023-03-18.
  8. Blain, K.; Gill, T.; West, M.; Anae, N.; Byrd, B.R.; Cohen, S.B.; Donlon, A.; Florvil, T.N.; Gallon, K.; Gore, D. (2019). To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism. Black Internationalism. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-05116-6. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  9. Blain, Keisha, "Confraternity Among All Dark Races: Mittie Maude Lena Gordon and the Practice of Black (Inter)nationalism in Chicago". Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, Vol. 3, no. 3, forthcoming.
  10. Reginald Kearney, African American Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition?, SUNY Press, 1998, p. 77.
  11. Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 108.
    - Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 240.
  12. Blain, K.N. (2018). Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom. Politics and Culture in Modern America. University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-8122-9477-4. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
  13. Gartrell, John (December 1, 2017). "'Hidden Figures' in the Robert A. Hill Collection: Mittie Maude Lena Gordon". Duke University.
  14. "Mittie Maud Lena Gordon". Geni. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  15. "John Lewis Nelson". Geni. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
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